Convert Month String to Integer in Java

Question

Given a month string such as:

    "Feb" or     "February" 

Is there any core Java or third party library functionality that would allow you to convert this string to the corresponding month number in a locale agnostic way?

Answer 1

You could parse the month using SimpleDateFormat:

    Date date = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM", Locale.ENGLISH).parse("Feb");     Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();     cal.setTime(date);     int month = cal.get(Calendar.MONTH);     System.out.println(month == Calendar.FEBRUARY); 

Be careful comparing int month to an int (it does not equal 2!). Safest is to compare them using Calendar's static fields (like Calendar.FEBRUARY).